I promised these guys I’d link this survey, but kept forgetting.

The survey is for both singles and married couples. Click here for the survey.

The study looks at issues regarding Negiah (premarital touching) and Niddah / Taharat HaMishpachah (family purity). Niddah and Negiah play an important role in the every day lives of Jewish men and women. The collection of handbooks on this topic grows from year to year, yet we know very little about how Jewish couples, men, and women experience and observe Niddah and Negiah. Anecdotal evidence and our previous research have led us to conclude that many couples and individuals are experiencing difficulties with this aspect of the Halachah. We are inviting the Jewish community at large to participate in this important survey to shed light on these difficulties and explore some ways to address them. Given the intimate nature of these matters, this brief, online survey is totally anonymous, and no identifiable information is collected.

Someone do me a favor and send me an email with “Taiwan” in the subject.

I want to see if my filters work.

Some stupid Taiwanese company keeps sending me four meg movies about pistons.

Shyeah, that’s what you call great marketing tactics.

About effing time. These archives should never have been made secret in the first place.

Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century.

The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe’s darkest period.

The countries governing the archive maintained by the International Tracing Service approved a plan to begin transferring scanned documents as soon as they are ready so that receiving institutions can begin preparing them for public use, said a delegate, requesting anonymity because a formal announcement was due later Tuesday.

The decision circumvents the requirement to withhold the documents until all 11 countries ratify the 2006 treaty amendments that enabled the unsealing of the documents. Ratification is still pending in four countries, and Tuesday’s vote was likely to shave several months from the distribution timetable.

But they’re still not giving full access to the people who need it the most.

Three countries, the United States, France and Germany, pledged to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to offset costs for preparing and transmitting the papers, said the delegate.

But some U.S. survivors expressed dismay that the documents will remain restricted to a single place the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and that they won’t have unfettered access.

“I’m anxious, because 105 people from my immediate family did not make it. I am the only survivor,” said David Schaecter, of Miami, Fla. “How do I obtain what I am rightfully entitled to obtain (to know) what happened to these 105 people,” he said.

I cannot imagine the loss of 105 relatives. I don’t even know if I have 105 relatives. I suppose I must. My great-grandfather had nine children, of whom my grandfather was the oldest. But he had them all in Scotland and America, so that part of the family made it through the Holocaust intact. And I’ve heard that I still have relatives in Riga, where my great-grandfather came from. I suspect my grandmother’s mother’s family—the Rieders from Germany—did not fare so well.

Perhaps now I can search the archives and find out.

And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of terrorists.

GAZA (Reuters) - At least 10 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday — eight in one incident — in the deadliest fighting between Hamas and Fatah since the rivals formed a unity government to end bloodshed threatening to spill into civil war.

For many Palestinians, the violence was particularly disturbing, coming on the “Nakba,” an annual day of national reflection over shared suffering in the conflict with Israel.

In an attack near Karni Crossing, Gaza’s main commercial lifeline with Israel, Hamas gunmen killed eight members of Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard, a Fatah spokesman said.

But wait! Who does Reuters say killed the terrorists?

The Fatah-affiliated guardsmen were en route to help comrades under assault by Hamas at a training base near the crossing when Israeli forces across the frontier opened fire at them, the spokesman, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, said.

There’s a different story from the AP:

Monday’s fighting erupted when Hamas gunmen approached a training base used by Fatah forces that guard the crossing, officials said. The base was set up in part by an American security team sent to train Palestinians on how to check cargo and baggage at crossings.

The Hamas force attacked the base with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, said Ahmed al-Kaisi, spokesman for the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard, which guards the crossing under an agreement with Israel. “We consider this a serious provocation and a crime committed in cold blood,” al-Kaisi said.

When forces from another Fatah security unit raced to the scene to provide backup, they were ambushed by Hamas gunmen, witnesses said.

A jeep full of security men that came under fire veered off the road and crashed. Hamas forces then surrounded the vehicle and riddled it with gunfire, said one witness, who works in a nearby factory. “It was unbelievable. May God help us,” said the man, who gave only his first name, Jamil, out of fear for his safety.

As the fighting raged, Israeli troops opened fire at two gunmen who approached the border, the army said. Palestinian officials said one man was killed. He was identified as a member of the Presidential Guard, who apparently was trying to help his comrades against Hamas.

Either way, it’s one more dead terrorist. And the AP is using the active, “kills,” in the headline.

Hamas Kills 8 in Gaza Border Clash

It’s still just a “clash,” but apparently, the AP can use the word “kill” when it comes to Hamas and Fatah duking it out.

And once again, may they both lose.

I have no idea how to answer this email:

Hello, I was wondering how I could gain aid in finding surviving relatives or their children in Isreal from their original destination of Poland after WWII.

I would appreciate any information. I am especially interested in the family of my father from Tarnapol, now Ukraine. I have information from my mother’s family from Vienna, Austria.

I know there are relatives in Israel.

Thank you.

Ruth

But I’ll send your suggestions back to her, or tell her to click on the link for this post.

Let us see if we can give you the ICRC and Israel in a nutshell:

ICRC refuses to let Magen David Adom join for decades; relenting only when they agree to use a “diamond” encapsulating the Star of David.

ICRC has yet to gain access to either the Israeli prisoners held in Lebanon, or the prisoners held in Gaza.

ICRC gets access to Palestinian prisoners on the asking. Pretty much any time.

And then the ICRC manages to slam Israel in a “private” report that just happens to get leaked to the New York Times.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a confidential report about East Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, accuses Israel of a “general disregard” for “its obligations under international humanitarian law — and the law of occupation in particular.”

The committee, which does not accept Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, says Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law “in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory.”

With the construction of the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries and the creation of a dense road network linking the different Israeli neighborhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report says, Israel is “reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area” with “far-reaching humanitarian consequences.” Those include the increasing isolation of Palestinians living in Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and the increasing difficulty for some Palestinians to easily reach Jerusalem’s schools and hospitals.

Yeah, about that Jerusalem thing: Where was the ICRC in 1948, when the Jews of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (which happens to be in—gasp! East Jerusalem!) were murdered and driven out by the Jordanians? How is it that from 1948 to 1967, this was never an issue with the UN, the ICRC, or any other nation in the world?

In the main plaza, an arch stretches skyward where one of the walls of the Hurva Synagogue once stood. Originally the Great Synagogue, the Hurva was built in the 16th century, but was destroyed by the Ottomans. The synagogue was rebuilt in the 1850’s, but was damaged in the 1948 war and then destroyed after the Jordanians took control of the Old City. Some consideration has been given to rebuilding the synagogue, but, for now the arch remains as a memorial.

Oh, wait. Of course. Israeli Double Standard Time. My bad. Muslim destruction of holy Jewish sites in Jerusalem and Israel get a bye.

And now, to the ICRC, which has at least one member trying to make Israel look bad. I’m guessing there will not be an investigation into the leak, and nobody will be fired for leaking this information to the Times. Just as I know the Israeli response will be buried way down deep in any news article that picks up this story—just as the Times reporter did.

The Red Cross committee, which is recognized as a guardian of humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, does not publish its reports but provides them in confidence to the parties involved and to a small number of countries. This report was provided to The New York Times by someone outside the organization who wanted the report’s conclusions publicized. The leak came just days before Israel’s celebration of Jerusalem Day this Wednesday, observing the 40th anniversary of the unification of the city.

[...] “We reject the premise of the report, that East Jerusalem is occupied territory,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem’s residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored.”

Sure they can. The world has spoken: Even though the Jews of Israel recovered the Jewish parts of Jerusalem nineteen years after they were captured from them by Jordan, Israel doesn’t get to keep them. Because they’re Muslim. Got it?

Yeah, whatever. 96% of Israeli Jews refuse to give up the Wall or the Old City. Suck on that, ICRC.

And a happy Jerusalem Day to you, too.

Last week, I bought myself a new camera. It was more than a year overdue—I’d planned on upgrading my camera with last year’s income tax refund, but the job situation cancelled those plans. Now, though, I have a brand-new camera that takes mpeg4 videos and translates quite nicely to YouTube. So I’ve been following the kitties around, annoying the hell out of Tigger (as you’ll see in Movie 2), and trying not to photograph my finger (took that part out of Movie 1).

Lair started Kitty Movie Monday. Now I have the Tuesday Tigger Movie (which will usually also star Gracie, and probably should be called the Tuesday Tigger and Gracie Movie, but hey, alliteration is all, sometimes).

While I was taking the first movie, [cue scary music] an interloper appeared.

But things ended happily.

And in the second movie, I finally got Tig to perform his main trick on camera. Tig is not your typical cat. Not only does he usually come when called (especially outside, and he has been trained to respond to my whistle), but he will stand up on his hind legs on command. Most of the time. You don’t believe me? Well, here’s the proof.

And now that I’ve gone totally over to The Catblogger Side, you can count on kitty movies fairly often. Don’t know if I’ll get them up every week, though. Lair sets a pretty high standard.